Shazam now offers to play music videos of identified songs

Shazam is best known as the go-to app for identifying songs but in the competitive industry of mobile apps, that’s no longer enough.

On Thursday, Shazam announced a partnership with Portland-based streaming music video platform Vadio that’ll bring its music video channels to the popular song identification app. What this means is that when using Shazam to identify a track, you’ll now be presented with the option to watch the song’s official music video alongside existing choices such as listening to it using Apple Music or Spotify.

London-based Shazam, which recently crossed the one billion download mark, is now profitable thanks to a business model shift to advertising.

Shazam Chief Product Officer Fabio Santini was upfront about the partnership with Vadio, saying that they want to give users a reason to spend more time with the app by giving them access to a rich and immersive music video experience. As a byproduct, the executive added, it creates new revenue opportunities for artists and provides brands with a powerful way to gain exposure.

Shazam isn’t the only company making moves in the music industry this week. Just yesterday, Amazon launched its long-awaited on-demand music streaming service. Dubbed Amazon Music Unlimited, the new service is similar to what you’d get from Spotify or Napster in terms of its catalog of tracks. Where it differs, however, is on price.

Non-Prime members will pay the standard fee of $9.99 per month but if you’re a member of Amazon’s all-encompassing subscription service, you’ll pay just $7.99 per month or $79.99 annually which works out to about $6.67 per year.